I’ve liked/\/\/\Y/\ since it was released over the summer. It’s actually my favorite M.I.A. record, the only one I’ve listened to regularly. It’s not the record people expected — but it was the smart record to make. The backlash received its fuel (and plenty of stoking) from Lynn Hirschberg’s infamous, agenda-ridden NYTimes truffle-fry piece, continued via a condescending Pitchfork review, became par-for-the-course. (To be fair, our Premature Evaluation, one I didn’t write or agree with, wasn’t exactly in love with the record.)

Over the summer I mentioned the treatment reminded me of when Liars’ They Were Wrong, So We Drowned was released in 2004. I reviewed They Were Wrong for Playboy.com, of all places, and an editor suggested I reevaluate my positive (4 Bunny Ear) score after the record was trashed by SPIN, Rolling Stone, and got a 6.3 from Pitchfork, etc. Like /\/\/\Y/\, it was an album that signaled a major break from a previous aesthetic and a push toward something quite different — in that case, the rejection of summertime dance-punk for what became the style of Drum’s Not Dead, an album I gave a 9.0 to at P4K, a review in which I made sure to mention those earlier bad scores:

[M]y favorite detail of this feel-good story– popular Brooklyn post-punk band falls out of favor by changing directions and ultimately produces an album that eclipses its debut– is that Liars are still waltzing along on their own terms. This, their third LP, shows zero concessions to the criticisms they received from publications like Spin and Rolling Stone, who awarded They Were Wrong their lowest possible marks. Succeeding rather than regressing or retreating, Liars have had the last laugh: Drum’s Not Dead is a majestic victory lap, and on all levels, a total fucking triumph.

The major difference(s) this time is that Rolling Stone and SPIN liked /\/\/\Y/\; it’s appeared on both of their year-end lists. That, and it’s too early to tell what M.I.A. will do next, and how people will react to it, but a couple of months ago, during a staff hangout, I said we should expect a reevaluation of it sooner than later. A few days later, I started seeing tweets by folks who’d initially trashed the record saying maybe they’d been too hasty. After that, a full-on reevaluation began. I couldn’t convince everyone in these parts, which is why it didn’t make our Top 50 Of 2010 (though it did make my own Top List and Honorable Mention). Our Top 50 was built on votes and math and required more support than I could give it, but I figured I might as well give you a few reasons why the album’s better than you remember. Even if you’re not convinced, it’s a good opportunity to reiterate why it’s important to reevaluate albums beyond snap leak-week assessments.

I still don’t get why everyone hated the cover art so much. She may go overboard with the paranoia angle, but she does have a point about the over-connected Internet culture we inhabit.

07 The chainsaw and power drill at the beginning of “Steppin’ Up,” the first proper, post intro thesis song on the album.

They signal the chopping and fractures in the pop collage that follows, sure. The chopping of that over-connectedness, too. They’re also just excellently loud. Diplo tweeted that /\/\/\Y/\ sounded “like skinny puppy,” that it “gives [him] nightmares.” This is because he’s a wimp.

06 Unlike a number of trust-fund indie rockers, the married-to-an-heir Arulpragasam’s not afraid to talk about her wealth.

She’s rich: “I don’t wanna talk about money / ‘Cause I got it,” “You know who I am / I run this fuckin’ club,” etc. So what? In this way and others, /\/\/\Y/\ was one of the most honest albums of the year — she wore her heart on her designer sleeve.

05 Speaking of which … After the success of “Paper Planes,” it was punk as fuck to hand an album like this to a major label.

It is also the best Suicide-sampling song to make it to Lettermancomplete with Martin Rev. (It’s sort of like Thurston Moore playing Harry Pussy on MTV in the ’90s, but to an even bigger audience.)

03 Speaking of using taste wisely:

She recast Dutch synth-pop group Spectral Delay’s icy, electronic ’82 tune “It Takes A Muscle” as a warm, catchy, underwater pop-reggae tune in the midst of her anti-digital manifesto. (Which reminds me: It’s tiring hearing about how M.I.A.’s the product of all these male producers … Who cares if Switch, Blaqstarr, and Diplo came in, or if she used some Sleigh Bells guitars? On top of the Spectral Delay, another seductive pop gem “Tell Me Why” samples the fucking Alabama Sacred Harp Singers!)

02 For all the “Paper Planes” fans:

Arulpragasam shows you she can make that pop song you wanted via “XXXO” and then take it away with the weirdo “Teqkilla” and onward. (Speaking of weirdo, all the URL purchases and hard-to-reach videos shouldn’t be considered in evaluating the album, but they’re great, too, adding to the overall concept, that the shit reaches all corners. Including her entertaining Q&A’s.)

01 The biggest reason why /\/\/\Y/\‘s better than you remember?

You read the bad reviews and either approached the record with prejudiced ears or didn’t listen it all. Take another (or first) listen — it’s one of the year’s more memorable releases, one I personally liked more than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (though that’s a different list entirely).

I don’t think the album deserved to get panned at all. There are a lot of memorable songs on the album and definitely some forgettable boring stuff. At first I thought the album felt incomplete and scattered, but I think thats what she was trying to do (it could also be an easy excuse for lackluster reception). If you start thinking about the total package and the expression of her idea through the artwork, music, and presentation /\/\/\Y/\ has more of an effect.

Maya is deliberately schizophrenic. M.I.A. was quoting saying she wanted to make the album “so uncomfortably weird and wrong that people begin to exercise their critical-thinking muscles.” A shame few understood her intent.

That sounds overly pretentious but then again she is and people get a kick out of it. You can only ‘exercise’ your audience’s ‘critical thinking muscles’ if your name is Miles Davis and the album you’re referring to is Bitches Brew.

I tend to feel the same way. The ideas presented seem to be focal point here and the music is merely just the vehicle which she uses to get those ideas across. For me, the songs are hit-and-miss musically but I do appreciate what she’s trying to say in them.

I loved this album, the criticism it received was a joke. Too much hypocrisy in the industry, and a lot of Cribbing Ideas, Glad Handing and Basically Following the Leader.
How did ALL of those reviews say bad things about a really good album… And now the reviewers are returning to say, “well, you know, we didn’t think about…” Come The Fuck On.

How about instead of hopping on the trend that says what something Is or Isn’t or how much it Sucks or Rawks, we actually CONSIDER THE FUCKING ART AND JUDGE IT ON ITS’ CONTENT as opposed to, ya know, reading what RS and Pitchfork said and making sure we hit our marks?

This kinda insanity is half the reason I never bothered to be a journo – so much pressure to say something untrue because someone with money tells you what to say.

Agreed. Your points are my points. I’ve never made it a secret that I’ve enjoyed this record. I’ve also never made it a secret that I don’t respect the journalists who caved to the backlash. It’s lame when the lemmingwave takes hold, but it does…often.

Its really an album you have to listen to in the right mood, and the right frame of mind, and from enough distance to appreciate. M.I.A. did not make this a pretty record and its easy to see how negative critical reception would snowball, though to be fair, it got quite a few positive reviews as well.

Yeah, because all music reviewers read every other review on a piece of work before writing their own so everyone can judge things on the same level, because somehow dozens of critics all saying the same thing is good for business and good for art. Oh, and we all worship at the altar of Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, because maybe copying what they think will make us cool. By basing everything on what they think, that’ll make us them, right?

People act like critics are in some secret society that meets in a basement and collectively decides to shit on an album because they feel like it and it will piss people off. Have you considered that a critical perspective is simply different from a fan’s perspective, or in this case different from your perspective? Critics often listen for different things than fans, and not because they don’t like music but because they’re writing about art, and writing about art and simply enjoying art are two different things. I liked a few songs on this album, but the ones I enjoyed were the ones that weren’t making a statement or aspiring to be different, they were the ones that simply sounded pretty, and while I’ll comment on that, and most critics, given enough word count, will as well, I’ll have to keep it in a general context around the rest of the album. I’m not paid to write about songs, I’m paid to write about albums, and overall, I thought this album was not good. Don’t accuse me of joining some kind of “groupthink” session with some guys from other websites just to make you feel stupid, because no one I know who writes about music has ever done that. I, and many other music critics I know, have a strict policy against reading other reviews, and as an editor, if another writer seems to be responding to other critics’ reviews (as they’ve done here), I always tell them to either cool off or write about something else, because it’s not worth slinging mud at other people’s opinions when what you should be doing is formulating your own.

Actually, journalists parrot each other in masses quite regularly. It’s called sensationalism and Maya has certainly been a victim of it. For example, speaking of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, how many reviews for the album now make it a point to use the word “maximalist” to describe its scope and sound? Courtesy of Rolling Stone, of course, as they were the first major publication to review it. Another example—a majority of the negative press Maya has received somehow overlooks the music and instead focuses on M.I.A.’s love for truffle fries. All of the surrounding gossip and controversy were more interesting than the music that was supposed to be at hand, and as a result, M.I.A. had a huge bullseye on her back. Go figure. Critics follow each other all the time. Given you’re a writer, you should know better than to even try to deny the fact.

My friends and I were completely dumbfounded over the hate this album received. We really loved it, maybe not as the complete album experience, but at least on a song-by-song basis. Maya seemed like something she needed to get out of her system, taking advantage of the success of Kala and Paper Planes to do something even more risque and experimental. Can’t wait to see what she does next.

I’m confused why everyone loves it now? …personally I did think that a lot were pretty harsh on it, but on the other hand there were a lot of Crap!

…and talking of prejudiced ears – am I the only one who wonders wether the posts before me is able to judge something by themselve or if they are just agreeing with everything that Stereogum says? – I’m just confused where all the haters went.

I agree with all of these points in theory, so the only objection I can make is in purely subjective: to me, it felt like her reach exceeded her grasp. It just didn’t feel like she was comfortable on the album. With that said, as a MIA fan I am REALLY looking forward to her next album, if she continues with this style and can grow a little more into it.

But I wholeheartedly agree that the backlash was intense, and to anyone who says that this is a career killer…come on.

Yeah, true that! If this album is MIA’s They Were Wrong, then I’m pretty excited to see what her Drum’s Not Dead sounds like. I personally have been a They Were Wrong fan for a while (I saw Liars open for Radiohead and the music I remember most from that performance was from They Were Wrong, So We Drowned) but I recognize that it may not have been quite as strong as They Threw Us All in a Trench and didn’t nearly reach Liars’s potential as made evident on Drum’s Not Dead. And while I think /\/\/\Y/\ isn’t MIA’s best outing by any means (“XXXO” is alright but not nearly as intense or exciting as “Paper Planes”, “Born Free” is a solid single that makes pretty good use of a really awesome sample but comes up short to some extent in my opinion of being great, etc.) I think it may be a necessary step to a very transcendent album.

I think a huge aspect of the initial negative press has been overlooked, because it’s a bit of an unsavory reflection of the state of the industry and music journalism: The initial leak, which persisted for weeks, was an awful quality rip.

I think some of the initial press for the album was written in response to low quality versions of the album. I listened to that version, which was riddled with pops and volume inconsistencies, and wasn’t impressed. I listened to a much higher fidelity version when it came out, and it made a huge difference.

Good job revisiting this album. It’s an important album and deserves some second looks.

Thank you for writing this. Although, I wouldn’t say that it was better than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, /\/\/\/\Y/\ was definitely one of my favourite albums this year. It didn’t deserve all the bad press that it received.

I agree wholeheartedly with what DS3M said. I heard the album and liked the super-aggressive content and form. From the “non-pretty” cover (man, you’re not going to find something similar on Etsy), to the texture of the sounds used -heavy emphasis on distorted mid-frequencies- in songs like “Illygirl” and “The message”. By it’s own standards and expectations, it’s an amazing album.
Then I read all the heavy criticism of the album, but dismissed it as it fell in the “tries to extract meaning from the author” category (which was basically annihilated by Barthes et al. 40 years ago). For me, that’s facile criticism, and it floods the internet’s most and least respected sites. I’ve sometimes read this critics and cannot help but thinking that what they’re doing is analyzing artist’s psyches with an almost total independence of the artist’s making (or “product” if you prefer). You only need to read M.I.A.’s premature evaluation last line to understand what I’m saying. Other examples abound.
So, to produce a valuable artistic product not only does this product has to correspond to the artist’s intentions, life and psyche but to what WE, the public, THINK are the artist’s intentions, life and psyche. In adding the artist to the appreciation of it’s product, we only have to take a step to judge art by the idea we have of the artist. So, if M.I.A.is a fake it follows that her art is bad. And if one disagrees with her moral or political status, in all probability, it will negatively affect the aesthetic judgment.

Which also allows me to make another point (which will probably get me flamed): Kanye.
Yes, I do believe that the very thing that ruined MAYA’s reception, helped to build Kanye’s MBDTF. Obviously, Kanye’s record is amazing, I’m not saying it isn’t. But I think that the thing that brought it to such incredible acceptance (a lot of people, literally, couldn’t believe it) was Kanye as a mediatic phenomenon. All this talk about his life, his frustrations, etc. and the way it “actually” corresponded (or, for the critics, seemed to correspond) with his artistic product, was a point in which almost all the reviews were anchored.
Someone pointed out the absolute lack of arguments that should have justified his top spot in p4k’s album countdown (read it please). I think that, right there in those lines, ALMOST lie’s the justification for his appraisal. I would only change two simple words for one; instead of saying “Through all that noise, we obsessed first and most deeply over the eye of the storm: THE ALBUM”, it should say: Through all that noise, we obsessed first and most deeply over the eye of the storm: KANYE.

Another possible reason why people hated on this album: M.I.A. has always made a name for herself with her crazy awesome shows, yet the songs on /\/\/\Y/\ don’t translate well in a live setting. On the album the bass is so complex and in flux that of course a venue’s speakers can’t do a good job of reproducing the subtleties that make /\/\/\Y/\ great. For example, when I saw her in Barcelona a week ago, I didn’t even recognize my favorite song, “Lovealot,” until she’d almost finished the performance.

I’m an individual and I always thought for myself and don’t let any publication or subculture think for me. On my Top 20 of the year, this album ranked at #6. I played the hell out of the leaked version, shitty quality and all. And after I purchased it, I played it even more. I never needed convincing, because I knew that it was something special when i first heard it. Love at first listen.

I can’t get behind your biggest talking point being “the listeners ears were tainted by the bad press”. It’s 2010, tons of people (especially us internet dwellers) listen to an album before the reviews come out. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but I wasn’t a fan, and my mind was untainted.

i love M.I.A’s music overall….every album has a filler song or 2, but MAYA has a great EP in it at best. i couldnt help but be disappointed and its a bit insulting that i have this opinion cus of some negative reviews…

its just plain tuneless and uninteresting….i don’t mind the new direction if it had songs to back it up. and a lot of her lyrics reach new heights of silly “rub a dub a dub a dub”??? tell me why’s entire lyrics. i pretty much agree with P4K except I enjoy XXXO immensly.

a few of these points stick, but seriously, compared to arular and especially kala, there is nothing on maya that is groundbreaking or even remotely catchy enough to warrant more than a third or fourth listen. sorry, everyone’s take on it by now is accurate: it’s forgettable, plain and simple. you’re all trying to perform cpr.

so wonderful that you mentioned how much you “liked” it during the course of this post – i “like” maya as well, but i “liked” a lot of other records this year. i didn’t go out of my way to defend their averageness much less list them among my favorite records of the year.

No, Rob. All of it sticks. Whether Maya appeals to your personal tastes or not, forgettable is the absolute LAST adjective to describe the album. Why do you think it has generated so much controversy in the first place?

In time, many will see the album as M.I.A.’s best. And I will gladly agree.

Well, to be fair, you’re right. It’s a memorable album. But I think what he was saying, and what I agree with, is that the *music* is forgettable. The fact that it generated some mixed reviews and definitely wasn’t the album that people expected made it memorable. For some people that’s not a good thing.

But that’s not true either. Both “XXXO” and “Born Free” have garnered a lot of positive attention for their sound aside from the controversy that surrounded them. If it wasn’t for the New York Times fiasco, at least one of them would be hailed as a defining single of 2010. Whether you enjoy the remainder of the album is beside the fact. The production is so combustive, aggressive and confrontational with its digital assault, that the music is immediately striking and leaves a lasting impression, whether some perceive this for good or bad. And thus Maya isn’t a forgettable album in the slightest, even if it’s not to some people’s tastes.

The harsh drill samples in the introduction to “Steppin Up” alone are enough to uproot teeth. You remember how Maya makes you feel— whether you are fascinated by its ear-shattering ruckus or filled with terror and annoyance.

Ok, for me, the music was forgettable because *everything* was try so desperately to be immediate and combustive. It was noisy and cluttered, and I forgot about it quickly like lots of other similarly noisy and cluttered things. But more crazily…

“Whether you enjoy the remainder of the album is beside the fact.”

Come on, that’s just ridiculous. You’re saying that this album is, I don’t know, important or relevant or something because it’s so challenging and up front, and really makes the listener take a stance. You’re straight up saying as long as something is intense and draws the listener’s attention is doesn’t have to be good – it’s already got your attention.

MAYA is the girl at the party wearing gold American Apparel spandex, fire engine red lipstick, and Mary Kate Olsen accessories. She isn’t pretty, everyone’s just starting at her.

No, actually it’s not ridiculous at all. I’m saying it’s memorable for the very reasons I’ve already said. Whether or not you like the album. Whether or not it’s the album most were expecting. It’s not that difficult to comprehend so there’s no need to bend my words out of context. If you’re complaining about Maya being too “noisy and cluttered,” then its message has clearly gone over your head.

Too many people have missed its point. It is willfully self-sabotaging and is a sonic manifestation of a world saturated with the conveniences of technology. The sounds are purposely cluttered and abrasive to illustrate the magnitude of our high-trafficked technological landscape. If Maya sounds harsh and overwhelming, then it has succeeded in its intent to polarize. It’s a musical contraption that accurately reflects the times, and relays a message that will age exceedingly well. Few artists are bold enough at such a vulnerable stage in their career to release an album this gutsy and relentless.

Maya is also the meditation of a woman who is clearly uncomfortable with the trappings of commercial success and the album perfectly distills her unease. At the hands of a lesser artist, a daring proposition such as Maya would be instant career-suicide, but with M.I.A., it is instead a bold and uncompromising triumph.

neil young’s trans is also “the meditation of a man who is clearly uncomfortable with the trappings of commercial success and the album perfectly distills his unease” and that album is widely regarded as a huge piece of shit

i didn’t insinuate that maya is a HUGE piece of shit, i’m just saying some freakouts against record labels/fanbase have potential to become an artist’s defining masterpiece, but most are a huge miss. and this just happens to be a big time miss. yeah, sorry, maya is more trans than berlin. give it another year.

nobody ever mentions trans in the same breath as harvest or rust never sleeps

talking about this record as the masterpiece it’s not has been quite the endeavor in itself, so i have to give you credit

listen, the record SOUNDS good. there’s not many other records that sound quite like it. it’s well-intentioned. born free is among her best material. even the obnoxious glitchy sounds show a creative spark that the early girl talk records didn’t.

but really, you can tell the diplo cuts from the rusko cuts without even looking at the personnel sheet because the diplo cuts are okay and the rest is filler. nothing gels. each track butts up against the next track in a way that can only be characterized as unpleasant. this is an unpleasant record to listen to. it doesn’t make you feel good when you listen to it. the lyrics are bad, she makes no effort in delivering them, which is a huge contrast to her other records. worst of all, if you back and listen to arular and then listen to this, you will get very depressed. it’s a letdown.

First off, I didn’t ask for your credit so here’s a full refund. Secondly, I never said Maya is a masterpiece. But I maintain that it’s a brilliant album and every bit as satisfying as her previous sets. Also, at least I’m consistent in my arguments. Unlike you, who claims to “like” the album one minute and then goes on to call it a big time miss the next. You’re about as confused as you imply the album to be.

i guess in some way, you’re right. i did say i “liked” it, but i suppose what i meant was that i “admired” it. it’s a confusing record, born to have its listeners harbor mixed feelings on it. if there’s one thing i can be sure of my assessment is that i’m mixed, and let the record show.

i get it: this post was a semi-interesting farce to get everyone all riled up and philosophical and short-term nostalgic and maybe click on the banner ads. but all this enthusiastically delayed discussion was just listeners’ guilt for not initially suckling the teat of a record that had immense hype yet ended up simply being a disappointment. let me pose this question then: how can you dub an average record a successful one? i suppose there are bright spots in maya and a few of which might hold the test of time should she have an extended career past this point (doubtful) to pen a greatest hits. my point is, an average record, or in this case a below-average record, is not a memorable one for 2010, and certainly not one for 2020. in many ways it’s not m.i.a.’s fault: how could she possibly follow up such an earth-shaking record as kala with this piss-off to establish some sort of “i don’t care” cred? what the body of this post does not mention is that in addition to diplo’s skinny puppy comparisons, he also dumped on this record multiple times on twitter. like calling it a turd and such. look on the bright side, since she is definitely done with diplo, her next record will have production duties by scott storch or maybe the-dream!

three or four posts later, you still have not commented on how this record holds up against her past 2 releases, because if you said this was better, you’d be lying.

it also depresses me a great deal that 1.) the author of this post uses the defense that “hey, at least one song here is good” and 2.) you seem to think that “dentist drill sound effects” on a “music record” deem that record as “art of great significance”

Maya is great because I don’t find it to be average at all. Please stop trying to persuade me to accept your arrogant yet uninformed opinion as fact. Also, Diplo is incredibly biased and perhaps bitter from the dissolution from their romantic relationship.

Maya was condemned to backlash from the beginning, BEFORE the hype period. Especially coming off the phenomenal success of “Paper Planes” and near universal acclaim of Kala, M.I.A. was enjoying ubiquity as a household name. The fact that you were wondering how she could even possibly top Kala tells me you were formulating expectations before hearing a single note of Maya, which ultimately creates bias. Also, too much exposure is often the primary trigger for a backlash. Her brash persona as a provocateur only fueled the fire. While I disapprove of much of her behavior as of late when dealing with media scrutiny, that’s still no excuse for critics to exploit her person rather than impartially critique her music.

As a result, Maya has been buried in scandal, but its reputation will undoubtedly improve over time. This happens to a number great albums. I have already discussed the many merits of this album, ones you continue to either deny or simply ignore in favor of caressing your own ego. Despite all of the digital cacophony that makes up the album’s production, Maya is very much pop-focused at its core, like her previous two. The biggest difference here is while her past efforts are earthy, organic and imbued with a worldly flair, the sonic template for Maya paints a much more industrialized landscape. The lyrics consist of the same revolutionary ideals that caught the attentions of many in first place. And the hooks in the majority of the songs are undeniable. While the settings have changed, the songs are still there. What’s truly depressing is that you are too busy enjoying your ride on the hate bandwagon to notice. I can’t be bothered with trying to convince someone who is only interested in hearing themselves talk.

Heh, at this point I really can’t tell if you’re serious or not, but I’ll respond anyway.

“Maya is only a big miss for people with small minds”
Bullshit. You’ve mainly talked about how this album challenges the listeners expectations, or how it angrily jumps out at them. I feel like such qualities evaporate when you take away the current context of the album. Which is to say, in ten years, when it’s just another random album from 2010, it won’t sound “challenging” or in your face or whatever. It will simply sound noisy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with music having a message. But distorted, messy shit *being* a message is basically worthless.

Born Free and XXXO are undeniably poppy (though I think XXXO is a little thin), but it’s pretty absurd to say the album as a whole is pop focused, but just with a weird industrial feel to it. It’s like saying you’re eating Mexican food, but it’s slathered in marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese, so it’s got an Italian feel to it. It just doesn’t work like that.

We aren’t hating just to be hating or hear ourselves type. And we’re not putting our opinions over anyone else’s. But when there’s an article telling us why this particular album is actually better than we thought it was, featuring a bunch of weak ass points, I think people like Rob and I have a right to speak up.

Except it’s not bullshit. Maya will be dismissed as “noisy” for people without a capacity to understand its message about our extreme digital consumption. Its sentiments about our inability to unplug from our technological excess is timely and ironically manifested in the form of sound and song. It’s an album for inquisitive and open minds, and therefore, perhaps it’s just not for you. But that doesn’t mean its adherents lack validity in their arguments. And you’ve misunderstood the context of industrialized in this case. I am referring to the production values specifically—the album’s heavy-duty atmosphere and that it incorporates a lot of processed, manufactured sounds, not the genre itself. But yes, Maya is firmly rooted in pop. At least half of these songs have hooks tailored for radio, despite their clamorous backings. The songs themselves are tuneful, contrasted from the dissonant sounds that comprise their sonic blueprint. It’s a bizarre, jarring fusion but one that works and satisfies immensely, for me, on an intellectual and aesthetic level. Whether unjust or not, Maya will have its haters. But it will also have its defenders, and that’s something people will have to accept and respect. I find Brandon’s points to be wholly accurate. M.I.A. knew this album would divide opinion like no other in her career and this debate is proof. And sure, Rob does have a right to speak up if he disagrees. Just like you reserve the right to be his un-appointed apologist, I suppose.

sorry, gotta agree with bonk. not for me. i can usually judge a record by its worth by how many times i go back to it. i’ve listened to the suburbs seven or eight times. the titus andronicus record, i can’t even remember at this point. i’ve listened to maya three times, and the last time was back in august. and i don’t need to revisit it to give it one more chance per this discussion only to remember my disappointment. you can continue your favorite argument “but dudes, it’s about the internet!” but the truth is a lot of artists out there could’ve used other means like parody and satire or even decent metaphors instead of glitch and dentist drills and computer noises and been more successful in relaying whatever theory m.i.a. tries here. the fact is, it’s kind of the reason most movies about computers or the internet suck so bad. the internet is too huge and too universal to create a concept around. the only thing this record proves is that this concept escapes m.i.a.

don’t you find your inane comments about bias just a little insulting? none of the millions of listeners can turn off the computer or put down the village voice in order to put any predetermined thought away before they pick up a record? sorry man, this is just one of those instances where all the bad hype and public missteps were an accurate reflection of the work. and we’ve seen, on the grand scale, that huge public disasters can lead to immensely enjoyable records and landing at the top of everyone’s favorite records of the year (kanye). i certainly didn’t judge her by all the bad press this past year. in fact, i thought the nytimes piece was ridiculous, the diplo twitter posts a little below the belt, and her letterman appearance was amazing and overlooked. she got a bad shake indeed. but when it comes down to it, she failed. she barely toured behind the record, there’s nothing in it that will please even the paper planes haters, and to top it all off, nobody was even talking about it by the time autumn came. this record was forgotten. the lack of enthusiasm after its release seems like this awful taste left in everyone’s mouths. but hey, a few people like that taste.

” Maya will be dismissed as “noisy” for people without a capacity to understand its message about our extreme digital consumption. etc etc etc”

See, my thing about all this is, I get it. I get why the album sounds the way it does and the message it’s trying to convey. But it still *sounds* bad. It’s aurally ugly. I don’t care if you can or can’t conceptually make a good album about the internet or the technological zeitgeist. I just care about how it’s lame sauce for my ear sauce.

Inane? Ha. Pot, have you met Kettle? This shouldn’t be an insult coming from someone with such a sheepish, petty attitude. Brushing your failure aside, not “everyone” is disappointed by Maya, just like not “everyone” automatically calls My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy their album of the year just because Pitchfork tells them they should. You generalize too much and you still can’t seem to make a point without contradicting yourself. Again, Maya left “everyone” an awful taste in their mouths, but a few people like that taste? Yes, because this makes sense. The real truth is you’re too wishy-wishy to form your own solid opinion without having to consult with what some tastemaker website says first. So just sit back and give me thumbs down out of spite all day if you want. I can’t be moved to change how I feel and vice versa. Keep your bandwagon seat warm. I don’t suspect you’ll be getting off of it any time soon. But if Pitchfork et al. were to change their minds about Maya tomorrow, I know who’d be right along there with them.

I’m glad you write how you feel about albums. I’m getting really tired of seeing sites that used to stand behind artists/albums they liked folding to what’s hip. If I see one more list with Kanye’s Fantasy on top I’m going to straight poop.

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